Internet disconnections come to Ireland, starting today

"Three strikes" will start striking out the Irish today. The Irish Times reports that one of the largest ISPs in the country, Eircom, has agreed to process 50 content industry complaints each week, and to disconnect users who rack up three complaints.

The move has been awaited for months. Eircom voluntarily agreed to the system after being sued by the major music labels, but had yet to implement it while it was challenged on grounds of data privacy.

But IP addresses aren't considered "private," said the Irish High Court in April, and so Eircom today becomes the only ISP in the country to adopt a graduated response system. The Irish Times says that this is the first such system in the world, though South Korea has had something similar (but mandatory) in place for some time. France has also approved such a system, but it has yet to take effect.

The system is needed, in the words of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet."

78 Reader Comments

I would like to complain about the entire country of Ireland for infringement, when can we just cut the backbone to the country?I would like to complain about the entire country of Ireland for infringement, when can we just cut the backbone to the country?I would like to complain about the entire country of Ireland for infringement, when can we just cut the backbone to the country?

... in the words of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet"

Because sharing a file or video is, of course, the essence of human repulsiveness ... 0_o

The system is needed, in the words of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet."

Ahhhh good. It's finally come down to penalties under law for the simple act of being human and containing a repulsive aspect (whatever the fuck that means). Better toss the lot of them in jail than clutter the world with them, guilty or not. Of course, the Irish are known for being scrappers and maybe the whole issue is that they were ever let out of jail!

... in the words of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet"

Because sharing a file or video is, of course, the essence of human repulsiveness ... 0_o

I was assuming the repulsive side he was referring to was in his own personality!

What provisions are there to protect the little people? What if they're wrongly accused? Public access point? Do complaints ever expire? Is 3 complaints from one "customer" which is really a family with four kids, spaced over a few years, grounds for disconnection?

The system is needed, in the words of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet."

This whole thing is stupid. It's not like an internet connection is solely for media consumption. It's a means of communication and should be protected like speech. The fact that media companies have convinced ISPs and governments that the connection is solely for media consumption is a travesty.

1) The sentence being taken here by commenters and called archaic or 19th century is in an ironic tone which sadly is lost on the rest of the planet seemingly.

2) Eircom have a pretty dominant position here in Ireland so this is quite serious for many people but if you're too thick to switch to direct downloads after strike 2 then you need to be turned off all forms of communication let alone the internet.

Everyone has to relax and not get all excited. The Judiciary decided and we have them to bring in as many new laws as the government here in Ireland so this isn't unusual in the manner it came in. Theres a million other ways of getting stolen material so we'll be fine.

The system is needed, in the words of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet."

According to the proposals, the first warning will come as a verbal phone call from Eircom. If I was an Eircom customer, I'd take this phone call as the opportunity to cancel and switch to another provider such as UPC, who are standing up for their customer's rights.

Also, we need a good lawyer who can argue successfully that an IP address is not sufficient evidence of infringement in a court of law. This would be a landmark decision that would finally clear up a big legal grey area.

Maybe it's just me but pissing off the Irish folk does not seem like a good plan they have a tendency to be.. how do you say.. Fiesty.

Ireland's unstoppable military is on its way to crush you like an ant.

I wonder how exactly this is going to work? I'm on Eircom, and they're pretty godawful when it comes to communicating with their customers. Do they notify you every time you get a 'warning'? More importantly, are they going to notify people quickly? Because I can picture a situation where someone racks up three warnings within a month or two and only finds out when they get disconnected.

Also, what's to stop someone getting disconnected and then immediately switching to a different ISP?

I would like to complain about the entire country of Ireland for infringement, when can we just cut the backbone to the country?I would like to complain about the entire country of Ireland for infringement, when can we just cut the backbone to the country?I would like to complain about the entire country of Ireland for infringement, when can we just cut the backbone to the country?

This whole thing is stupid. It's not like an internet connection is solely for media consumption. It's a means of communication and should be protected like speech. The fact that media companies have convinced ISPs and governments that the connection is solely for media consumption is a travesty.

If you don't want your communication priviledges taken away don't violate the policy.

Eircom voluntarily agreed to the system after being sued by the major music labels

So being sued into compliance is "voluntary"? Sounds like media company spin.

Seraphiel wrote:

What procedures are in place to punish people and organizations that make false accusations?

One would hope that making three false accusations would be enough to have the liars disconnected from the internet and their complaint-filing permission revoked.

But somehow I suspect the punishment (if any) for such behavior would be far lighter...

You can guarantee there's no penalty for false accusations. Plenty of these media bastards in the US abuse the system pretty hard. They never get taken to town on it, unless somebody goes to the expense of suing them, which is expensive and just not worth it for an individual or small company.

This may yet prove a smart strategy for Eircom. As pirates leave for less scrutinizing ISP's they take their "10% using 90% of the bandwidth" habits with them. Eircom gains a much faster customer experience for their lawful customers with no hardware upgrades relative to the number of customers lost, while the ISP's who take the "new customers" actually get saddled with the broadband hogs, requiring expensive hardware upgrades to maintain the status quo.

This may yet prove a smart strategy for Eircom. As pirates leave for less scrutinizing ISP's they take their "10% using 90% of the bandwidth" habits with them. Eircom gains a much faster customer experience for their lawful customers with no hardware upgrades relative to the number of customers lost, while the ISP's who take the "new customers" actually get saddled with the broadband hogs, requiring expensive hardware upgrades to maintain the status quo.

is Eircom thinking something clever that we are not?

That depends on how the service works. If it's unlimited use there could be some sense to that. If it's metered access, losing that 10% will mean bankruptcy. That's the double-edged sword of metered or capped internet. It makes you (the ISP) a lot more money from the people who use excessive amounts of internet, but it also means you're directly profiting from internet piracy, which puts you more than ever in the cross-hairs of anti-piracy organizations.

Zapadlo wrote:

How to deal with stupid people:

Step 1: More to Ireland.Step 2: Accuse the the judge followed by everyone responsible for passing the mentioned bill of piracy.Step 3: Kick back and enjoy.

You're kidding, right? As a matter of history laws like this are never enforced on anyone with any degree of power or money. At least unless the target is a political opponent.

This may yet prove a smart strategy for Eircom. As pirates leave for less scrutinizing ISP's they take their "10% using 90% of the bandwidth" habits with them. Eircom gains a much faster customer experience for their lawful customers with no hardware upgrades relative to the number of customers lost, while the ISP's who take the "new customers" actually get saddled with the broadband hogs, requiring expensive hardware upgrades to maintain the status quo.

is Eircom thinking something clever that we are not?

Looking at their broadband plans, they have an allowance system per package, like 75GB per month. Eircom is probably making money off people who overuses their connection.

This may yet prove a smart strategy for Eircom. As pirates leave for less scrutinizing ISP's they take their "10% using 90% of the bandwidth" habits with them. Eircom gains a much faster customer experience for their lawful customers with no hardware upgrades relative to the number of customers lost, while the ISP's who take the "new customers" actually get saddled with the broadband hogs, requiring expensive hardware upgrades to maintain the status quo.

is Eircom thinking something clever that we are not?

it takes %90 of ericom's bandwidth to download 3 songs? man the internet must suck there. OH you think they will only target the big fish who MUST be using %90 of the internet, that way they deserve it. right...?

So just IP addresses but no names? Do the Major Media mafia companies have to go to court to prove that the person(s) in question is infringing? Or is this like the IRS, presumed guilty before innocent?

This whole thing is stupid. It's not like an internet connection is solely for media consumption. It's a means of communication and should be protected like speech. The fact that media companies have convinced ISPs and governments that the connection is solely for media consumption is a travesty.

If you don't want your communication priviledges taken away don't violate the policy.

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, Know your rights as a Citizen and say "F" to Eircom

I wish to supply the Irish Nation with the following links...

Freemen of Ireland:http://freemanireland.ning.com/ - This is the most important site as a citizen you can visit. If Eircom try ANYTHING you can "legally" kick them in the jaw using the laws of the country

Blocked Site Access:http://blockedsiteaccess.com/ - A few months ago Eircom made an attempt to block access to the Pirate Bay - The site is still accessible if you know how

I do not agree with piracy, its wrong BUT i also DO NOT agree with Eircom snooping in my personal business and the personal business of the countries citizens. Eircom is partially owned and bullied by the government of Ireland so use your rights as a Freeman against them. Again i strongly urge you to visit AND READ your rights as a freeman (link above)

Eircom will be very happy to lose the torrent hogs but eventually i can see all the ISP's following suit.Then we will have a police state Internet in Ireland.Then the Resistance will spring up.sales of external hard drives will go up.in schools, individual classes will have a shared hard drive to be passed around.

LAN gaming parties will be enhanced to include file sharing.

i can see a new phenomenon of large groups of tech savvy individuals meeting up in each others homes with their laptops all connected to superior 24 port network switches and literally terabytes of data moving aboutand all outside the control of any authorities or media companies.

The piracy issue will get 10 times worse because when users establish a sophisticated trading network that does not rely on the bottleneck as restrictive as that which is their internet connection, then they will start sharing High-definition movies as commonly as they previously shared a 700MB DIVx file.Therefore there will be less incentive to buy the higher quality DVD.

>in schools, individual classes will have a shared hard drive to be passed around.

LAN gaming parties will be enhanced to include file sharing.

i can see a new phenomenon of large groups of tech savvy individuals meeting up in each others homes with their laptops all connected to superior 24 port network switches and literally terabytes of data moving about and all outside the control of any authorities or media companies.

The piracy issue will get 10 times worse because when users establish a sophisticated trading network that does not rely on the bottleneck as restrictive as that which is their internet connection, then they will start sharing High-definition movies as commonly as they previously shared a 700MB DIVx file.Therefore there will be less incentive to buy the higher quality DVD."

Soon, these Irish LAN pirate groups will become so large they will wish to share their warez with other similar groups in England. The pirates will save money in piggy banks to buy ships and lay fibre-optic cables across the sea. But this will only connect the pirates in Ireland with England, and they hear their friends in America have great warez. So they save really really hard and build a space program and launch satellites for warez sharing. The piracy is now 10 million times worse because all the ships and all the satellites and all the pirate bandwidth. Therefore there will be less incentive to buy the higher quality bandwidth, and America will collapse. Irish teenage interweb pirates will rule the world! Feel their power!

I really wish these kinds of laws had automatic retribution for those falsely accused. Then perhaps ISPs will allow more than 50 complaints a week, seeing as any wrong accusations could lead to a fiscal gain for the ISP (either taking a cut of the retribution or applying it to the customer's subscription which still stays in their pocket).

Then you could have the ISPs playing the role of defender. A role most of them don't want, but some seem keen to do.

I wouldn't be surprised if someday in the near future, we get disconnected for saying the wrong political things on the internet...

We've already seen political opponents occasionally end up on national blacklists even in what we'd otherwise consider free countries. This will definitely become commonplace in what are today free countries, the only question is how long we have until then. This type of thing generally occurs in four phases of varying lengths:1. Mandatory censoring of illegal content, e.g. piracy and child porn2. Mandatory censoring of technically legal content that is considered a serious danger to citizens, e.g. instructions for making bombs, hate speech3. Mandatory censoring of morally objectionable content, e.g. porn, drug use, or violence4. Mandatory censoring of political opposition and dissent